Valorant

The team moves quickly into the bombsite. One person starts defusing while the others cover him. As the smoke clears, the enemy team is in your view. The firefight begins…

Valorant is a new multi-player competitive shooter game that came out in 2020. Teams of 5 are pitted against each other to attack and then defend a bombsite. The players can choose from a variety of different characters that all have separate abilities. Players must buy weapons and use abilities against the enemy team to secure a win.

Each character has a variety of abilities they can use to help them attack or defend. One of my favorite characters, “Pheonix” can use flashbangs to blind enemies for a short time, and also throw down a huge flame wall to block enemy line of sight.

Valorant is quite different than most of the other games in my archive. In particular, there are 2 distinct traits that separate this game:

1. Its a team-based strategy game (Multi-player oriented)
2. Its quite competitive (People don’t play this game to relax!)

Being team-based and competitive, there are a lot more things that can complicate your game. The biggest of these is having to work with other people. When I first started playing multiplayer games, I was quite young, so I didn’t really know how to deal with other people. If someone got mad and was yelling, I didn’t know how to help. The competitive nature of the games I was playing sometimes brought out a toxic side of people. That being said, it also brought out teamwork and leadership from others. That leadership is something I’d begin to learn about as I played more Valorant.

There are many maps in Valorant that you can play on. Each map has different sites for attackers to attack from and defenders to hold. High-ranking players are expected to memorize the different layouts and callouts for each map.

USC recently formed their own Valorant team, and through the tryouts, I was chosen to be one of the captains of the team. I hadn’t held a role quite like it before, so I was very nervous to start, and there was a lot I had to learn.

Although I had been immersed in the competitive gaming world for a while, I needed to understand how to take a leadership role. After losing our first 2 matches as a team, I rewatched the games and started to understand what it meant to be a good leader:

As an IGL (In-game leader), I had to be quick and decisive for my teammates. They counted on me to keep a level head and make callouts. Decisiveness wouldn’t always lead to victory, but indecisiveness would always result in losing.

Valorant is extremely fast-paced as an fps game. Kills can happen in fractions of a second. Being quick with your decisions and reaction can make or break a match.

Along with decisiveness, maintaining a good attitude is incredibly important for a leader. I found that attitude is passed down through the ranks of your team. If the leader is angry and frustrated, everyone gets angry and frustrated. On the flip side, if the leader is strong, encouraging, and positive, then the rest of the team follows.

People on your team also might get negative on their own. My outlook has changed from scolding these types of people to actually meeting their negativity with positivity. I try to make my teammates look on the bright side and focus on what we did well. For example, if someone makes a good play, then you can encourage and compliment them. On the other hand, if someone makes a bad play, then you can say “We’ll get 'em next time. Nice try!”

This change in mentality made a world of a difference for the team. We started winning a lot more and became much closer as friends too.

I used to see being a competitive eSports player as something to be ashamed of, but as I’ve grown, I see now how much it has taught me. Nobody is born a leader. Nobody is born knowing how to get along with people who are angry and frustrated. Only by living through these challenges, can we learn how to overcome them.